Why The NBA's Salary Cap Floor Is Totally Meaningless

As has been excessively documented, the Philadelphia 76ers are
still quite a way short of the minimum team salary
threshold. Lull of the offseason notwithstanding, this story
has been overplayed for three reasons: the threshold doesn't need
to be met for several months yet, it will inevitably be met
before then and, most importantly, it doesn't really matter at
all if it is never met.

Philly's tanking strategy is hugely unsubtle and a tad unsavory,
but entirely logical. Knowing they hadn't enough talent or
incumbent potential to become a contender in time soon --
particularly in light of the absolutely staggeringly,
debilitatingly unsuccessful trade for Andrew Bynum -- they
decided, as best as possible, to stop acquiring any. They traded
away their best player for someone who can't take the court,
haven't signed a single free agent and, given that one of the few
rumored free agent candidates they've been linked
to was Chris Duhon, should probably continue to
not bother signing any. It's an emphatic tank job, and yet, tough
as those can be to reconcile with a fan base, it seems worth it
here.

All this inaction has left them at $40,013,749 in committed
salaries to 11 players, which will rise to $45,386,989
when Nerlens
Noel and Michael
Carter-Williams sign. (They haven't yet done so.) For
the first time this season, the minimum team salary will be 90
percent of the salary cap, equal to $52,811,100 to a $58,679,000
cap. The Sixers, then, are almost $7.5 million short of the
threshold, and there's no one left on the market to spend even
nearly that amount on.

This doesn't matter.

The 'punishment' for missing the minimum salary threshold is
merely that you get charged up to the amount of it anyway. That's
it. The excess is divided up amongst the players on the roster at
a percentage determined by the NBA Player's Association, and
that's all that happens. That's not a punishment at all. That's
not even really a penalty. And thus, going over it for the sake
of going over it would be meaningless.

Moreover, things won't stay this way. I know not of any instance
of a team failing to meet the minimum salary threshold, for the
simple reason that there's no point in missing it. If you're
going to have to pay $52,811,100 in salary anyway, which the
'punishment' guarantees, then you might as well get some players
out of it. The minimum threshold does not have to be met until
the final day of the regular season, and there's many months of
trade talks between now and then.

This $7.5 million gap between the Sixers' team salary and the
minimum salary threshold, and the $13 million in cap room they
still boast, is no burden. Indeed, it's the greatest trade asset
in the league. Philly can use this to take on salary (and
importantly, the assets) of other teams who want or need to trim
it. They've already done this on a small scale four times. It
cost them roughly $4 million of that space and one second-round
pick to land all five of Royce White, Tony Wroten, Tim Ohlbrecht, James
Anderson and Furkan
Aldemir (whose NBA career will be found somewhere on the
oft-drawn curve between Reggie Evans and Michael
Bradley). This is what cap space is for: the cap management to
acquire pieces for the future. They could have burned that $4
million in a bidding war for Carlos Delfino, but what would
be the point?

That said, the days of mass salary dumping from taxpaying or
near-taxpaying teams onto blatant tankers may not be like they
used to be. This past offseason, half of the teams in the league
had cap space; five years ago, only three teams did. With the
incentives to lower payrolls now far greater, more teams are
engaging in it. Spending is down, contracts are small and shorter
and payroll flexibility has been made a heightened priority. This
has been aided in no small measure by the amnesty clause; a lot
of the chaff that would have been traded outwards is instead now
being cut.

Those teams who do have enormous payrolls and little flexibility
are generally there on purpose. Brooklyn, New York and Miami are
the most obvious and extreme examples of this. Only three other
teams (Chicago and both L.As) are due to pay the tax this season
as things stand, and with so many more teams than candidates for
2014/15 cap room, there is not going to be a huge clamor for
teams to open up more room.

Nevertheless, the practice does still happen, as Utah proved
earlier this summer. And further candidates are out there. On a
large scale, Chicago would take any call offering to
take Carlos Boozer. Shifting Jason
Richardson's dead salary out the other way, plus the usual
returning assets, potentially tempers the loss of 2014/15 cap
flexibility for Philly. (Although they would have to be very good
assets because Boozer's contract is freaking enormous.) Moving
Willie Green gets the Clippers under the tax,
and, on a purely asset management level, the Sixers could
accommodate his return for a small fee. Those in proximity to the
tax such as Memphis and Toronto, who have used the stretch
provision on Fab
Melo and Quentin Richardsonjust
to open up more flexibility under the tax threshold, could always
benefit from a little more. And then, of course, there
is Kendrick
Perkins.

Options abound, then, and the market can yet change dramatically
in the five months until the deadline. Until that time,
Philadelphia will be happy to float along with their current
young core, lose heavily and hold all the cards in the trading
stakes for a few months. They have the potential to facilitate
the entire trade market this coming February, as well as next
June.

But let's not wrongly insist that they have to do something. They
don't.